(First off, if you are an ex-marchFIRSTer, then you can connect with other ex-marchFIRSTers at the marchFIRST alumni page. If you happen to know me (I'm Scott Stoecker, in case you reached here by searching instead of navigating from my home page), then sign my guestbook - we can catch up. I worked in the Grand Rapids office from August 2000 to October 2001, doing a few months of work in Southfield as well.)

I was hired by marchFIRST in July of 2000, and began working for them on August 1st in Grand Rapids, MI. They have a great building on Monroe Street called the Brass Works Building . It was an old manufacturing building and looked very modern / retro, like many cool Internet companies had. So I was taken in by that, and the recruiting person, Shannon, was convincing, and a nice person who I got to know after I started working there.

The training class was in Lisle, IL, at a Marriot conference center. Nice room, nice food, and I met some good people, who are all probably working for other companies now. Sure, I wasn't real wild of the team building games that we had to play, but that is just personal choice.

The stock at that point was in the mid-20's to low 30's, I'm not sure which. I later learned that it had been much higher, at least in the 60's, when marchFIRST was first formed in March of 2000. Everything seemed fine, though I spent the first month or two I was there on the bench. (For non-consultants, that means I did not have a project.) Which was no big deal - I did some studying and such.

I finally got a project for an e-commerce site, and all was good until the rumors start circulating about lay offs. I didn't think much of it, though one person that I knew was let go, which I thought was too bad, but how attached can you get to a person in three months?

Everything was still fine for a few more months. There were a couple more layoffs, but nothing big, and I really didn't think anything of it. I had worked for EDS, and layoffs were something that happened from time to time, but it never had affected me. I was a developer with valuable job skills and all that.

March 2001 rolls around and I am sent to Brea, CA (near Los Angeles) to do work for a company called Scene7, an on-line furntiture vendor. It was a very interesting project, creating a check-in / check-out system for vendors. And the people were good. Scene7 was where I learned that marchFIRST was basically dying.

Mike Carr was one of the marchFIRST people that was working there also. I was in blissful ingnorance of what was going on at marchFIRST, just enjoying the weather, the job, and staying at the Orange County Hilton, about five miles from Disneyland. He started talking to me about what was happening at the office, and turned me onto a web site call The May Report, which gives analysis of Chicago area companies, which marchFIRST was. There was a lot of talk about the state of mF finances on the site, and the Yahoo! boards.

As the weeks went by, the news did not get any better, and bankruptcy talk was pretty thick. I have fond memories of Mike and I out back talking about how our company sucked, and then going to lunch in his Mustang, still complaining about how we were being screwed. Good times.

I e-mailed the home office once to see what was going on, and if I should return to Grand Rapids. I was told to stay in southern California, that everything would be fine. Nevertheless, I stopped staying at the Hilton and went to the Homestead Suites, which was less than half the price of the Hilton.

During one stay, I got a call from the hotel mananger. My corporate AmEx card had been canceled. So, I had to use my personal card to continue to stay. News about marchFIRST continued to be bad, and Mike and I both contemplated not coming back out to Brea. I decide to return. I was sent there to do a job, and it wasn't finished yet, and I was determined to finish it, being very close to the end.

The news finally hits that marchFIRST has filed for bankruptcy. The $100 million dollar cash infusion we received from a venture capitalist was burned through in a matter of months. The upper management of the company was just terribly incompetent - that's the only reason I can think of why such a company with such a talent base of workers and a client list that marchFIRST had would go belly up so quickly and spectacularly.

By this time, lay offs have been massive, and fully half the company - about 4,500 people - had been let go. I, however, remained. I had begun looking for another job, but decided to ride out the storm. When things went bad aka bankrupcty) in March/April 2001, I had been working there less than a year, and I just don't like staying with an employer for such a short amount of time. And besides, I had a trip to England coming up, and I'm due for some vacation! I ignored the fact that because of the debt from my personal credit card and my AmEx card (which I had to pay, and then was reimbursed - theoretically), I was out (and still am) $6,700.

The fateful e-mail came while I was in Brea. One of the manager in GR told me not to schedule my travel back to California, that marchFIRST and Scene7 were working out some contractual disputes. The next week, while I was in Grand Rapids, I was told to send Scene7 all remaining code, as I would not be returning to finish the job.

After I returned from two weeks in the UK, I was almost immediately sent to Southfield to work on a project for the State of Michigan. It was a decent project and it lasted five months or so. At the end, things got slow, but we were readying for phase II of the project.

It was a Tuesday or Wednesday in October when I went to the phase II project meeting. The Grand Rapids office (at this point, I'm still in Southfield) was getting new laptops, and so I needed to go back to GR and return my old machine and get a new one. I return to GR on Friday and spend the day doing very little, as I have no laptop, and instead read a bunch of computer books. By the end of the day, I have my brand new, very fast Dell laptop.

I was told by one of the billing people that there were some issues with the Southfield office paying the Grand Rapids office for my services. (One of the those office politics thing.) So I said I would come to Grand Rapids on Monday instead of going to Southfield.

When I go to the office on Monday, I did some research and check my e-mail, the usual things for a Monday morning. The person in charge HR came to see me and said that the office manager wanted to see me. I said sure, and before I had even walked out of my cube I realized that I was getting laid off. I mean, the HR manager never said more than hi to me before, and I never even met the office manager (the old one, Ingemar, was laid off a few months ago.)

The reason I was given was that there was no work coming up that would use my skills. I don't believe the reasoning. I mean, I had just been to the phase II meeting in Southfield, and I was going to be needed there. Also, I was the only ASP developer left at the Grand Rapids office (not bad, huh?) That would leave the GR office without something with those skills.

But I did better than I thought. Of the ~140 employees in the Grand Rapids office when I started in August 2000, about 40 were left in October of 2001. And I got to see a lot of LA. So all it all, it wasn't such a bad experience. And it sure was an interesting ride.